Perceptual Differences of Marketing Journals: A Worldwide Perspective

The practice of evaluating faculty and business schools based on their journal publications has increased the emphasis on research output in peer reviewed journals. Since journal standings are a frequently debated issue, this study seeks to examine the perceptual differences of journals between different segments of marketing academics. Based on a worldwide online survey, journals are assessed in terms of four subjective quality metrics: journal familiarity, average rank position, percent of respondents who classify a journal as top tier, and readership. It is demonstrated that an individual's geographic origin, research interests or journal affiliation can have a significant impact on journal rankings.     

Assessing contribution of research in business to practice

This editorial offers some thoughts on wider criteria of evaluation than journal and article impact metrics. The editorial suggests that the measurement of journal and article impact metrics simply confirms the status quo rather than the promotion of resonance between practice, research and theory. The editorial proposes a more holistic recognition of impact, influence and usefulness that elevates the importance of three further dimensions of application, context and involvement. The editorial considers the value of scientific research to business practitioners and students concluding that an ingenuous and on-going scheme of exchange between scholars and practitioners would lead to cross-fertilization of ideas and experience and enhance empathy, learning and understanding. The alternative pursuit of scientific “respectability” by scholars in the most myopic academic sense has become less and less useful to students as well as the business community leaving the suspicion of business schools obsessed with making money whilst pretending to pursue knowledge and produce future citizens to make the world a better place.     

Evaluating Journal Quality: Beyond “Expert” Journal Assessments in the IS Discipline

Assessing the relative stature of journals devoted to the information systems (IS) discipline is an important issue for IS scholars and those who evaluate them. Even though journal assessment results are often dubiously applied by those making hiring, promotion, and merit decisions, the fact that they are so often a major ingredient in these decisions demands that we understand underlying journal assessment processes. Beyond processes involving the opinions of various “experts,” we here examine how IS journals can be evaluated based on overt behaviors of crowds of IS scholars. These behaviors are revealed preferences, in contrast to stated preferences found in opinions. Two classes of objective journal assessments are studied: impact measures and power measures. Among the former, we find that so-called journal impact factors are problematic, rendering their meaningfulness in evaluating journal stature highly suspect. Another kind of impact measure, the H-index, is found to be a more straightforward way to gauge journal impact. Two power measures for assessing IS journal stature are examined: publishing intensity and publishing breadth. The stature of IS journals according to each of the impact measures and power measures is determined. A comparison of the results shows that a small group of four or five IS journals are repeatedly found at the top across multiple objective assessment approaches. To account for both the consumption and production of IS research, it is suggested that a combined use of impact and power measures be employed in exercises aimed at evaluating relative statures of journals devoted to IS research.     

Investigating Information Systems Research in Canada

This project reports on the state of Information Systems (IS) research in Canada by analyzing research output and impact of Canadian IS scholars appearing in the form of peer‐reviewed journal articles. Specifically, we (a) measured individual productivity and impact, (b) measured institutional productivity and impact, (c) listed journals in which these works have appeared, (d) identified the most influential articles, (e) developed a ranking of IS scholarly journals from a Canadian perspective, and (f) compared the obtained journal ranking with the global IS journal rankings. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the Canadian IS discipline exhibits signs of academic maturity. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

JBBM at 21 with a Tribute to David T. Wilson: Founding Editor of the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This article documents the contributions of David T. Wilson to the field of business-to-business marketing in general and his contributions as founding editor of the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM).

Methodology: In-depth interviews were conducted with David T. Wilson’s doctoral students to discuss the impact he had on their education in business-to-business marketing and in their personal lives. The list of dissertations, which Dr. Wilson chaired, co-chaired, or served on committee, was compiled through the cooperation of libraries at Texas A&M University and The Pennsylvania State University. This list was verified through ProQuest, a global information-content and technology company that provides solutions, applications, and products for libraries. Further, information in this article was derived from a literature review of David’s early JBBM editorials and scholarly articles, as well as those of the current sitting editor.

Findings: Results of this research demonstrate David T. Wilson’s long-term commitment to the field of business-to-business marketing over his 33-year career at The Pennsylvania State University. His influence is demonstrated through his research, teaching, and service related to business-to-business marketing.

Research implications: David T. Wilson’s vision for JBBM was to position it as a theoretical journal with an international editorial review board and a global impact, including handing the editorial reigns over to David Lichtenthal, the current sitting Editor since 1995 and Wilson’s 16^th doctoral student out of a career total of 38.

Practical implications: It is the responsibility of the editorial review board to understand the journal’s past to help guide the future. Therefore, understanding the contributions of David T. Wilson, as the founding editor, to JBBM and the field of business-to-business marketing is useful to scholars and managers alike. This understanding provides a valuable historical context.     

Recent Journal and Trade Publication Treatments of Globalization in Mass Media Marketing and Social Change

International marketing strategies, made possible by technological innovation and forced by economic reality, must be supported and refined by empirical study of their successes and failures. This study reviews all articles published in over 800 scholarly journals and trade publications in 1989 and 1990 in an attempt to describe the studies becoming available to the international marketer for guidance. In all, 130 articles dealing with mu media or advertising and marketing in an international perspective were found. Six dimensions of these are analysed and discussed: editorial type; subject; the mass medium of focus; inclusion of quantitative data; and country or countries.

This analysis of all 130 studies reveals that articles are more apt to cover news than more generalizable types of knowledge, refer to media and to international aspects more in general terms than in specific terms, often provide unsubstantiated advice, generalizations or predictions, under-represent countries outside of Europe, and are very infrequently based on primary data.

An overall judgement is that empirical studies of the success or failure in the use of media or advertising in global marketing, necessary to provide guidance to international marketers, were virtually absent from the body of scholarly research published in the two years studied.     

A wakeup call for the field of entrepreneurship and its evaluators

In this editorial, I seek to inform administrators and members of promotion and tenure committees about significant developments in the field of entrepreneurship. Using both objective and subjective data, I present a case for why entrepreneurship journals should be considered on par with other, premier management journals, which are widely considered to be unequivocal “A” journals used to assess scholarly contribution and productivity. I entertain and address common objections to equal treatment for entrepreneurship journals, and conclude with a call to action for both entrepreneurship scholars and the field's evaluators.     

Financial Literacy 501

The articles in this special issue of The Journal of Consumer Affairs focus on financial literacy. The scope of the content spans conceptualization and measurement as well as factors influencing financial literacy and its impact. This editorial prelude suggests one way that educators might use this issue as well as a previous (Summer 2008) special issue of the journal that also focused on financial literacy.     

PROLIFERATION OF ACADEMIC JOURNALS: EFFECTS ON RESEARCH QUANTITY AND QUALITY

There have been significant structural changes in research markets in recent years reflected in the increase in the number of academic journals. This paper uses a differential game model of authors and journal editors to examine the effects of an increase in competition among academic journals. Does an increase in the number of academic journals lead to an increase in scholarly articles published? Will an increase in publishing outlets adversely affect research quality? The results show greater competition does not affect research output and in fact enhances research quality. The number of journals and the relative discount rates of authors and editors are crucial determinants of the effects of competition.     

Blockchain meets marketing: Opportunities,threats, and avenues for future research

Blockchain technology is having an increasingly profound impact on the business landscape. Blockchain—a means for storing information and transactions in secure, decentralized manner—has many potential applications for marketing. However, marketing research and practice are still tentative about the use of blockchain and are yet to fully understand it and embrace it. The goal of this editorial is to advance in this direction and offer a path toward incorporating blockchain technology into our scholarly marketing thinking. We review the basic terminology and principles of the blockchain process, provide a comprehensive overview of the potential impact of blockchain on several core marketing areas and propose research questions that can help advance both research and practice as this technology develops.This editorial is accompanied by five research notes written by leading marketing scholars, which explore applications of blockchain to the following marketing topics: Advertising (Joo et al., 2022), Branding (Colicev, 2022), Creative Industries (Malik et al., 2022), Pricing (Zhang, 2022), and Privacy (Marthews & Tucker, 2022).     

A citation analysis of selected marketing journals

Citation analysis is one method of assessing the quality of a journal in a discipline. Over eight thousand citations are analysed to determine the frequency of use of a selection of American and European marketing journals. The rankings demonstrate the pre-eminence of American journals; and an analysis of marketing citations by general business journals indicates that research published in marketing journals is having an impact on other business areas.     

Trademarks in branding: Legal issues and commercial practices

Abstract

The call for a special symposium on ‘The Brand and Its History’ has led to two journal issues that focus on trademarks and brands, respectively. This issue is devoted to trademarks, the more concrete, well-documented, and measurable aspect of brands. This editorial introduces trademark studies; summarises previous contributions from economic, legal, business, and historical literature; provides a short overview of the topics and findings of the seven articles included in this issue; and reflects on further research.     

How to derive consensus among various marketing journal rankings?

Despite the increasing popularity of journal rankings to evaluate the quality of research contributions, the individual rankings for journals that ranked below the top tier of publications usually feature only modest agreement. Attempts to merge rankings into meta-rankings suffer from some methodological issues, such as mixed measurement scales and incomplete data. This paper addresses the issue of how to construct suitable aggregates of individual journal rankings, using an optimization-based consensus ranking approach. The authors apply the proposed method to a subset of marketing-related journals from a list of collected journal rankings. Next, the paper studies the stability of the derived consensus solution, and the degeneration effects that occur when excluding journals and/or rankings. Finally, the authors investigate the similarities/dissimilarities of the consensus with a naive meta-ranking and with individual rankings. The results show that, even though journals are not uniformly ranked, one may derive a consensus ranking with considerably high agreement with the individual rankings.     

Guest editorial: perspectives on sustainable consumption

The typical guest editorial within a special issue of a journal will explain the theme of the special issue, introduce the different contributions that follow, outline the contributions that each makes and identify the common threads that connect them. By contrast, this editorial article seeks to provide an overview which explores the broader context for the challenges that are presented by the pursuit of ‘sustainable consumption’ as a field of scholarship, a form of behaviour and a public policy goal. It explores some of the complexities involved in understanding sustainable consumption, and the ways in which conventional approaches to understanding consumption and consumer behaviour may be insufficient to understand and promote sustainable consumption.     

Business Ethics Research with an Accounting Focus: A Bibliometric Analysis from 1988 to 2007

This article uses bibliometric analysis to empirically examine research on business ethics published in a broad set of journals, focused over the period 1988–2007. We consider those journals with an emphasis on accounting. First, we determine the citation frequencies of documents to identify the core articles in accounting research with an ethics focus as well as the contributions of influential fields included in the research sphere of these journals. We also employ document co-citation analysis to analyze the scholarly communication patterns that exist within the realm of the specified articles. Second, we utilize social network analysis tools to profile the centrality features of the co-citation network of these documents.     

25 years of Psychology & Marketing: a multidimensional review

The first issue of Psychology & Marketing was published in 1984. The journal was conceived as a forum for academics and practitioners in psychology, marketing, and related fields to engage in an exchange of scholarly information. The raison d'être of the journal was to bring psychologically sophisticated information and methodologies to bear on all aspects of marketing theory and practice. This review analyzes the performance of Psychology & Marketing from several perspectives, and includes data comparing its performance to the performance of other journals. Looking back over the last 25 years of its history, it seems fair to conclude that Psychology & Marketing has clearly delivered on its tacit promise of effectively building the knowledge base of marketing through psychology‐based insights. Looking forward, it seems reasonable to anticipate that the journal's well‐established track record in terms of diversity in the content, research design, and methodologies of its published articles will continue to stand as a welcome and refreshing distinction from other journals covering comparable domains of study. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Academic labour,journal ranking lists and the politics of knowledge production in marketing

In this paper, we engage with the rising importance of journal ranking lists. We explore the pressure these place on marketing academics and the politics of knowledge production, stressing academic game-playing, careerism, and paradigmatic homogeneity. We appreciate that scholars are disciplined by these lists, their line managers, and reaffirm list power through their own patterns of self-management. Nonetheless, marketing academics should avoid making the naïve assumption that the appearance of a paper in a highly rated journal necessarily serves as a proxy for ‘quality’. Publication in a particular outlet does not transform the ultimate contribution being made in any substantive fashion. We provide an extensive critique of the function and impact of journal lists. However, it is also recognised that these are very important for members of the marketing community. As such, we explain our reasons for contesting the recent regrading of the Journal of Marketing Management (JMM) by a prominent journal list and underline the changes that have been made to the Journal since the beginning of the current editorial term. Finally, the support of prominent scholars among our thought community for the policies being implemented is highlighted and we underscore the rigour of contributions to the Journal, the review process, the rising citations, downloads and truly global readership of the JMM.     

A brief commentary on the past,present and future trajectory of the Journal of World Business

In this brief commentary, we reflect on 50 years of the Journal of World Business and its predecessor, Columbia Journal of World Business. Commenting from our roles as authors, editorial board members, reviewers and advocates for the journal, we chronicle important trends in JWB's editorial emphasis and publication record, trends that are reflective of broader changes in the global business environment and the field of International Business. We derive a series of themes that have ebbed and flowed during the period, and reflect on these patterns and their implications for IB scholarship. We conclude by deriving insights from past contributions that can shed light on future directions in the international business field.     

Logistics Professional Identity: Strengthening the Discipline as Galaxies Collide

The merger of logistics, operations, supply management, and related disciplines into the broader field of supply chain management (SCM) has brought together academic fields with different professional identities and competing visions of what SCM ought to be, what students ought to be taught, and what the priorities for research and publication should be. This raises serious concerns because logistics faculty are less numerous than faculty in related fields. Logistics professional identity risks being diluted by the merger, resulting in potentially serious consequences for the future of logistics education and research. This paper explores these issues and offers suggestions to preserve logistics' professional identity, education and research in a supply chain world. We propose that logisticians expand the journals where they publish logistics research, continuing support for strengthening the Journal of Business Logistics as the “A” journal in logistics, rethink the way we train doctoral students, and work to preserve our community both inside and outside business schools.     

Ensuring Impact: Thought Leadership in Logistics and Supply Chain Research

Achieving impact in research is the goal of any singular article and for the journal, in total. This editorial helps to define how impact in scholarship and practice is achieved in the Journal of Business Logistics. We encourage scholars to “get out ahead” of practice by identifying problems that truly matter to industry and to conduct those inquiries using state‐of‐the‐art methods, such that relevance, rigor, and impact are fully realized.